Upcycled Foot-Stalls

Made to Order Upholstery

Most folk who live in Brighton UK know about Shabitat – Home of Magpie Recycling. Treasure trove and bargain hunters paradise. I came across some battered old foot-stall cubes in there a while back. They were upholstered in faux leather, that always starts peeling after a while. But they had potential so for £2 each I snapped them up.

They then gathered dust at my workshop for a while until I finally decided to give them the facelift they wanted. Compare to the armchairs and sofas I have been doing lately, I thought they would be a fairly straight forward job. But things always takes longer than you think right?

I had some velvet off-cuts from my patchwork chairs I upholstered a while back, which were just enough in the yummiest colours to wrap these cubes..

In preparation for the festival season we always try to stock up on one of our staples, the upcycled acid smiley. We use 100% cotton salvage sweatshirts or high quality wool jumpers. Each circle, eyes and mouth are then hand cut from leftover jumpers and fabrics and machine stitched in place. No print here! Each one is hence a complete one off.

Equally loved by old rave dads as well as young and hip millennials like Satya here. You can have your very own made by sending us your jumper that you want embellished or get in touch to see what we currently have in stock.

I couldn’t resist to make another one! Had all these gorgeous bits of velvet left from the wing back armchair project that I wanted to use and a tub chair came into Shabitat this week so perfect timing! Its up there with my favourites this one. I do have some more of this velvet left so if you want a tub chair in these colours its actually possible. Get in touch for more information.

You could either sew a patchwork top with the smaller pieces you have, or if you have big enough pieces (half of a meter should be plenty) create a simple cushion cover with a zip like these below. Not experienced in sewing? We run cushion cover making classes at our Brighton based shop. Check out our workshops page for dates.

I embellished three oversized hippy jumpers with acid smileys a couple of years ago to take to festivals. They got snapped up straight away! So now we make them in different colours on sweatshirts and jumpers. Still all made from 100% reclaimed textiles of course. We only use high quality jumpers and sweatshirts and all the smileys are cut out and ironed on by hand and then satin stitched by one of our crew. Here we have Shabitat’s very own George modelling the latest batch for us.

Check out our Etsy Shop. Sometimes we have some in stock. If not, then get in touch and we can make one to order in your choice of colours.

My good friends Dan and Millie are about to have a baby. Consequently they are going to need a nursing chair. Fortunately they had found an armchair that they found comfortable but needed recovering. Millie had these fab pair of curtains that she wanted to re-purpose so all that was left to me was to put the pieces together. I think little D is going to approve.